The month of August leading up to the Mayweather-McGregor fight saw some of the premier fighters in the sport fight on ESPN. Manny Pacquiao fought Jeff Horn, Vasyl Lomachenko fought Miguel Marriaga, and Terence Crawford fought Julius Indongo. Those fights now serve as the introduction to Top Rank on ESPN as the two companies enter into an exclusive 4-year agreement.

HBO and Showtime have dominated boxing broadcasting over the last twenty years. This is the first time ESPN has made itself a major player in boxing. According to Dan Rafael at ESPN, there are already 18 cards available for broadcast during the first year of the deal.

The biggest revenue-drivers for both promoters and fighters are PPV events. New streaming apps are now allowing people to bypass the financial commitment to watching the fighters by basically leeching off of someone streaming the event.

“For Mayweather-McGregor, it’s going to be tens of millions of dollars [in stolen signal]… There’s no doubt about it. This is going to be the most pirated event in pay-per-view history. I predict that.”

After tickets for Mayweather-Pacquiao didn’t reach the general public, Mayweather Promotions and Dana White said that they would make an effort so that regular people would have the chance to buy tickets to attend. Just a few days away from the fight it appears that the fight has yet to sell out. As CNBC points out, the lowest ticket price for Mayweather-Pacquiao was valued at $4,000 and the cheapest ticket to get into Mayweather-McGregor is $1,500.

…despite a series of reality-TV worthy press junkets hyping this fight, neither bots nor humans have been interested in paying face prices. A week after tickets first went on sale, nearly 2,000 tickets hit the secondary market. These tickets were priced at roughly a 30-percent discount to “face price,” and since then, prices are down another 30 percent. With nearly 1,500 tickets still available, it’s likely that prices will continue to fall in the days leading up to the fight.

In the 10 days before Mayweather-Pacquiao, average prices fell 17 percent. If the same happens for or Mayweather-McGregor, the cheapest ticket for fight night would be close to $1,000.

UPDATE: On August 22nd the ticket sales for Mayweather-McGregor may have passed the $72-million live-gate record set by Mayweather-Pacquiao.